A new drug vial

Industrial design
Healthcare
2018

Medication administration errors happen more often than they should. This problem has a significant financial cost to the health system, is detrimental to patient’s health and healthcare providers' reputations. There is a culture of attributing these errors to individuals, but in most cases slips happen due to systemic flaws.

New strategies and solutions need to be put in place to address system issues preventing users from making errors. In this project, I propose a concept of a drug vial to streamline the process of drawing a drug and labelling the syringe, reducing the chances of an error happening.

Anesthesiologists workstation

The current anesthesiologist’s workstation has an inconsistent labelling system that needs to be manually applied to each syringe. The labels are hard to read, especially in emergency situations.

Besides the current anesthesiologist's current workstation there is a picture showing how the anesthesiologist’s workstation would look like with the proposed concept. The drugs are much easier to read and less prone to errors.

Packaging

The new vial would be package would be the same as current syringes packaging. This package had a bigger surface to display the drug information and shipping and handling would be similar.

Task analysis

The task analysis map informed in which steps the current process of drawing drugs were most exposed to errors.